Tag Archives: Awards

Art Center Racks Up Art Directors Club Awards

More great award news—the 2011-2012 Art Center Viewbook has won a Silver Award in the Art Directors Club 90th Annual Awards competition in the Professional Book Design category.

Judged by an international panel of the world’s most respected creative professionals, the ADC Annual Awards competition honors the best design from around the world in interactive media, broadcast and print advertising, graphic design, publication design, packaging, photography and illustration. The Viewbook will be included in the Art Directors Annual, the oldest and most respected compendium of outstanding work in the industry. The Viewbook will be on display at the awards presentation in New York and will then be included in the Art Director’s Club exhibitions that travel throughout North America, Europe, Asia and South America.

But the Viewbook wasn’t the only winner—the Safe Agua Chile book produced by Designmatters won a Merit Award in the Student Book Design and Student Motion categories, and the Cymatics exhibition garnered a Bronze Award in the Student Branding category. The Fly Title Sequence won a gold in the Student Motion category.

Congratulations to all for these well-deserved honors!

Awards Honor Exceptional Alumni

Each December, the College and Office of Alumni Relations present the Art Center Alumni Awards to three outstanding alumni.

The winners, chosen by the Art Center community, are recognized during the Fall Term graduation ceremony.

Photo by Lara Warren

We are honored to announce the following Art Center Alumni Award winners at Saturday’s commencement:

  • Doyald Young ADVT ’55, awarded the Lifetime Achievement Alumnus Award in recognition of his dedicated work as an educator and lifetime of legendary work in typography, logotypes and alphabets.
  • Stephanie Sigg GRAD ID ’98, awarded the Outstanding Service Alumni Award in honor of her humanitarian design impact through her work with various NGOs, nonprofits and cause-related campaigns.
  • Geetika Agrawal GRAD ID ’05, awarded the Young Alumni Innovator Award in recognition of her passion and accomplishments in social media, digital culture, physical interactive art and new technologies.

Congratulations to our alumni for these well-deserved marks of distinction!

Art Center’s Design Office Work Among Year’s Best

Art Center’s in-house Design Office has been featured in Print magazine’s Regional Design Annual 2010, with two pieces included among the best American designs of the year.

TOOLS brochure

The most comprehensive survey of graphic design in the United States, entries are divided by region (ours falling into the “Far West.”)

The winning entries are Art Center’s Williamson Gallery TOOLS exhibition brochure (page 65), designed/art directed by Graphic Design alumna and Winnie Li, and the Spring 2010 Art Center at Night Catalog (page 67), designed/art directed by Li and illustrated by Miguel Ramirez.

They’re in good company – the entries from this region ranged from a TEDIndia brochure to (RED)NIGHTS benefit posters to editorial illustrations for The New York Times Magazine.

Art Center at Night Spring 2010 Catalog

“Good design makes the ordinary extraordinary,” said Lucille Tanazas, judge for the Far West category.

“Good design is smart and thoughtful. Good design is provocative. Inventive. Good design enlightens and enhances our understanding of the world; has the capacity to elevate the spirit. A good designer is a catalyst; he or she makes all of the above happen and is able to inspire others to do the same.”

Congrats on a well-deserved honor!

Art Center Media Minute

Some recent media coverage featuring Art Center, our faculty, students and alumni:

Alumnus Jorge Pardo Named MacArthur Fellow

A hearty congratulations to Fine Art alumnus and installation artist Jorge Pardo, who has been named a 2010 MacArthur fellow, and recipient of the MacArthur ‘genius’ award.

Pardo, as the other 22 recipients, recently learned through a surprise phone call from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation that he will receive $500,000 in “no strings attached” support over the next five years. MacArthur fellowships come without stipulations and reporting requirements, allowing fellows unprecedented freedom and opportunity to reflect, create and explore.

The Los Angeles-based Pardo’s projects include his personal home and LACMA’s pre-Columbian gallery exhibition hall.

Congrats, Jorge! Read more:

Art Center Tops IDEA Awards List of College Wins

The Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) has unveiled the winners of the 2010 International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) competition—and Art Center topped this year’s list of college wins with five awards!

A celebration of the year’s most inventive and creative product and product concept designs, this year’s competition received the most entries since its beginnings 30 years ago.

The 2010 IDEA jury, made up of 18 world-renowned designers and design thinkers, spent weeks previewing entries online and two-and-a-half days of face-to-face evaluation and debate. Judging criteria focused on eight areas of industrial design excellence: innovation; benefit to the user; benefit to society and natural ecology; benefit to the client; visual appeal and appropriate aesthetics; usability testing, rigor and reliability for the design research category; and internal factors, methods and implementation for the design strategy category.

Our winners:

Silver IDEA:
1881 “American Red Cross Fashion” Branding Strategy
Koo Ho Shin, GradID
Faculty: Andy Ogden, Steve Montgomery, Katherine Bennett

Bronze IDEA:
Spirit: New-Generation Sustainable Automotive Seat
Magdalena Paluch, GradID
Faculty: Heidrun Mumper-Drumm, Fridolin Beisert

Remax Snowboard Boot
James Yoo, Product Design
Faculty: Fridolin Beisert

Luxy Vespa Helmet
Daniel Shih-Tung Chang, Product Design
Faculty: Fridolin Beisert

Latrine Design
Juan-David Quiñones, Product Design

Continue reading →

Student Sylvia Liu Wins G.I.R.L. Scholarship

Entertainment Design student Sylvia Liu is the winner of Sony Online Entertainment’s $10,000 2010 G.I.R.L. Scholarship. She has been awarded a 10-week paid internship at SOE’s headquarters in San Diego as well as a $10,000 scholarship.

Liu was one of over 200 applicants vying for the Gamers in Real Life, or G.I.R.L.,  scholarship, which aims to help more women enter the video game industry. Finalists were asked to submit original concept art depicting a new game environment and new characters for either Free Realms or EverQuest II.

Congrats, Sylvia!

Read more: Sylvia’s G.I.R.L. Q&A and at Gamasutra

Es Tiempo Wins I.D. Award

Great news: Es Tiempo, a cervical cancer awareness campaign which resulted from a Designmatters transdisciplinary studio has won Best of Category in the Student Division of I.D.’s 2010 Annual Design Review. The project was among more than 400 entries.

The project, a collaboration between Designmatters, USC’s Keck School of Medicine and USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, took place last summer and was led by the College’s Advertising Department, including lead faculty Elena Salij and Maria Moon. Es Tiempo is a broad-based communications and outreach campaign encouraging Latinas to seek out early cervical cancer screening.

A warm congratulations to the student team behind Es Tiempo: Phillip An (Illustration), Mark Brinn (Graphic Design), Chris Lack (Graphic Design), Tracy Hung (Graphic Design), Haelee Kang (Graphic Design), Lucia Loiso (Photography and Imaging) and Camille Ontiveros (Fine Art).

Read more about Es Tiempo at the project’s website, and be sure to check out this great write-up by DesignObserver.